The Edge
by FuckMePumps
Summary: Nothing can save him from the darkness now... Sasuke centered. Oneshot darkfic. R&R.


**a/n:** **One of my darker, depressing fics. My first of this genre in Naruto. Read. NOW.**

**d: I don't own Naruto, the anime and manga that rightfully belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.**

**Warning: Sasuke being a bit OOC, mild coarse language, violence, self-injury, and dark themes.**

**-O-**

_**I am afraid.**_

_**-Kelly Clarkson, Because of you**_

**-O-**

Naruto woke up to the sound of rustling leaves, mind still groggy from sleep.

He glanced around and, from what he made out, Sasuke had gotten up from his place around the campfire. Kakashi-sensei dozed with his book on his face, while Sakura was curled up on the soil, using a log as a head pillow. With his curiosity winning over his lethargy, he quietly stood up and decided to follow.

He barely heard the light footsteps, so he stumbled and groped around in the darkness, the foliage roughly hitting his face and scratching his arms every now and then.

Suddenly, the footsteps stopped. The Kyuubi vessel stayed behind and hid in the trees. He only then realized that the young shinobi was standing on the very edge of a cliff.

And in the dim, fading moonlight, he saw the unmistakable figure of Uchiha Sasuke. His toes were right over the edge, his whole body as if on a balance, and it looked like… it looked like…

…He was about to jump.

"S-Sasuke! W-What are you doing?" He asked fearfully, barely loud enough for the other ninja to hear.

Sasuke turned his head at the sound of his teammate's voice. "Naruto!" He hissed, eyes narrowing. "You're supposed to be asleep!"

"Well, good thing I wasn't! Get away from there Sasuke! If you miss your footing, you might die!" Naruto exclaimed, waving his arms to emphasize.

Sasuke backed away a few inches from the ridge, facing his rival. "Who said I didn't want to die?" He laughed sardonically, mocking the other boy. Naruto's eyes widened, and at that moment, he would have been absolutely terrified of Sasuke if he wasn't so terrified of what was going to happen to him.

"W-What do you mean?" He managed to stutter out.

Sasuke's face contorted at the inquiry. He wasn't sneering anymore, his expression replaced by one of rage, desperation, and vulnerability.

"I meant that I don't want to live anymore! You yourself should know the feeling of defeat and worthlessness! I don't want to live anymore, Naruto! I. WANT. TO. DIE!"

With that, he whirled around and thrust his weight forward, his body quickly disappearing under the cliff's edge faster than the blink of an eye.

"**SASUKE!"**

Naruto dashed forward, mustering the chakra he had not exhausted from that day's mission and performed a few hand seals.

"Kage Bunshin no jutsu!" In seconds, a couple of bunshins appeared and linked hands, arranging himself at the very bottom, to reach out for a friend that he might have already lost to oblivion.

**-O-**

"_Is Sasuke-kun ever gonna go out of the bathroom?" Sakura wondered aloud._

"_Yeah, he's been there a long time now, huh, Kakashi-sensei?" Naruto followed up, still slurping from his bowl of ramen._

_The lazy jounin looked up from his book, his thoughts within agreement with his students. Come to think of it, it's been more than an hour since Sasuke excused himself from their inn room to go to the bathroom…_

"_Oi, Naruto, Sakura, I'm just gonna check up on Sasuke, okay?" He said, though it was more of a statement than a question. Sakura seemed hopeful, while Naruto was oblivious, as always._

_He pocketed his little pocket book for a while as he knocked on the bathroom door at the other side of the hall._

"_Sasuke?"_

_No reply._

"_Sasuke?"_

_Still dead silence._

"_Hey, Sasuke? You alright in there?"_

_This time there was a faint groan, and worry seeped into his mind. Without hesitation, he burst into the small, confined room as a shocking image lay before his eyes._

_The boy was in the bathtub, deathly pale, his black eyes glazed, and there were numerous angry wounds slashing his right arm, which was shining red, the slick blood that was pumping out generously pouring unto the white porcelain._

_For a moment the sensei was frozen in place by shock and horror, before instinct took place._

_He was then at the boy's side, kneeling in a pool of blood as chakra-filled hands went on to heal the wounds that Sasuke had obviously imposed upon himself. _

_His brows were knit in concentration but raised when Sasuke's other hand touched his._

"_Kakashi-sensei… stop." He gasped just as another trickle of blood slid from his mouth. "I want to die."_

_He was ignored, so he aimed a weak punch at the older man's face, which was quickly deflected as his wounds slowly healed._

"_I said stop!" He whispered angrily. Kakashi glared at him._

"_You are not to attempt anymore attacks on me, Sasuke, as long as I'm trying to heal you. That's an order." He barked._

_Sasuke was too weak to argue then, focusing his tired gaze on the bluish-green chakra that surrounded his right arm. After a few more minutes, Kakashi wiped his brow and sighed in relief._

"_You were lucky I got here in time, Sasuke. With that large amount of blood you lost, you could have died." He said monotonously._

_This seemed to ignite the Uchiha heir's fury. "But… I wanted to die! I wanted to die, but you healed me… I wanted to die… But healed me… I wanted to die, I wanted to die…" He trailed off his mumbling of incoherent nothings, as tears slowly trailed down his cheeks, mingling with the blood._

"_Why did you want to die, Sasuke?"_

_Sasuke caught his teacher's intent look on him. "There is nothing more to live for…"_

"_What makes you say that? You're a very talented ninja, with a good future ahead of you, and you've got friends, and…"_

"_Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! JUST SHUT THE HELL UP!" He near-yelled heatedly._

_Kakashi paused to stare at him. He was broken, battered, bleeding…_

"_Don't you get it? Don't you see that none of those matter anymore? I am a failure, and I had to be the only one in our clan to survive! Me! The failure! Don't you know how heavy a burden that is?"_

_He stopped, waiting for any sort of reaction from his sensei. He got none, but a silent urge to go on._

"_I swore on my family's grave that I would avenge them, even if I died! I would avenge them, and kill that bastard of a brother I have! But you know what, I've been kidding myself all along! I'll never beat Itachi, I'll never get stronger that him, I'll never surpass him, and I'll never bring glory to MY DAMN-WELL DEAD CLAN!"_

_He coughed, voice becoming hoarser as he continued. "Do you get it now? Do you see why I want to die? There is nothing more to live for if I continue living for no purpose at all! See? I'd rather die than…" He choked on his words. "I'd rather die than face the world as the Uchiha failure. I'd rather die than to live not by the promise I swore to my family._

"_I've got nothing more to live for, Kakashi-sensei. That's why," His tone drops an octave, and he says it almost softly now. _

"_That's why I want to die."_

**-O-**

Naruto didn't want to open his eyes, in fear of finding out that he was grasping to nothing but thin air.

"Naruto, you baka."

The blonde was almost tempted to smile when he heard those familiar words. They sounded almost friendly, the memories they triggered pleasant, almost like a time long ago where nothing was wrong…

He pried his eyes open to look at Sasuke straight in his pitch-black eyes. He only then realized their situation…

The fingers of one of Naruto's hands were firmly locked around a defiant Sasuke's fist, while the two dangled from a chain of only a handful of Naruto clones.

"Naruto, let go of me." Sasuke said indifferently, almost calmly, his words dropping like venom from his pastel lips.

Naruto managed to grin at him, straining to keep his hold intact. "I won't let go of you, Sasuke-kun."

"If you don't let go, I'll take you down with me, Naruto."

"I won't let go... no matter what you do... no matter what happens… I made up my mind, and...and… I'M NOT LETTING YOU GO!" Naruto shouted stubbornly.

"You don't know what you're talking about, so just…"

"I already told you! I'm not letting you go! Listen to your friend, Sasuke! Listen to me, who you dare to call your best friend! Am I not like a brother to you? Am I not your friend?"

"You're not my friend, Naruto. Maybe you were, in another time, to another Uchiha Sasuke. I am not the Sasuke you once knew, the one you called your friend. So please, Naruto, you're not my friend…

"At least, not anymore."

Bitter tears squeezed out of his hyperactive teammate's eyes. "Why do you want to die, Sasuke? Why?" Aren't you happy? Why. Do. You. Want. To. Die?"

Sasuke looked at him with a face that also posed a question. "The real question is, Naruto: Why would I want to live?"

With that, Sasuke drew a kunai from his pocket with his free hand and slashed it across Naruto's arm, making the other boy jerk his arm backwards and loosen his grasp on his already long-gone friend.

**-O-**

"_Oi, you alright now, Sasuke?" Naruto burst into the room cheerily, a basket of fruit in his hand to present to he and Sakura's black-haired teammate._

_The pink-haired girl thwacked him in the head. "Ssh, Naruto! Sasuke-kun might be asleep… oh, hi, Sasuke-kun!" She chirped upon noticing that Sasuke was wide and awake on the hospital bed, offering a slight smirk to them._

"_Are you feeling better?" She asked sweetly. Naruto reddened in the corner in anger and jealousy._

_Hatake Kakashi watched his team from his corner in the little white room. He knew that his medical experience was very limited and that the healing he did on Sasuke's arm was only temporary, so he rushed the boy to the hospital. He proved to be no struggle at all, after falling unconscious only minutes after he said the revelation that shocked even his stoic sensei._

'_I've got nothing more to live for… that's why I want to die…'_

_How could such a young, teenage boy possess such a strong desire to die?_

_The medics frowned at his injuries. Any self-respecting expert would know at first glance that the wounds were self-inflicted, but Kakashi pleaded that they stay quiet. Anyway, he was in a good state then, and only needed a minor blood transfusion to replace the amount he had lost._

_He really should talk to Sasuke concerning his deep depression, but he looks pretty fine now, doesn't he?_

**-O-**

Newly-promoted 12-year-old genin Sendo Tenshi of the Hidden Sky Village had wandered off, away from his teammates and sensei and into the heart of the woods. He was very proud of himself for becoming a ninja, but still retained his mischievous and immature attitude all the same.

But if there was one thing about Tenshi, was that he was brave.

He had been exploring in the forest (more like trying to find his way back to the campsite) when he staggered upon a lump covered by fallen leaves.

A little probing using his sandaled foot revealed the body of a boy, maybe only a few years older than him, with pale white skin that contrasted drastically with ebony-blue hair, red eyes half-lidded, presumably dead for no more than a day. Closer inspection revealed that he died from a high fall, and, judging by his hitai-ate, was from the Hidden Leaf Village, Konohagakure.

He gasped, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. But if this was a dead body, doesn't it mean that there were enemies around? Reporting this to his group might prove useful to the mission…

Suddenly, something on the boy's arm caught his eye. Ignoring the coldness of the body and the blank look of the near-closed eyes, he went closer to see that there was something written, no, carved onto his skin, in big, bold letters.

Scars.

'THIS IS MY SUICIDE.'

**-O-**

**_Go fix yourself._**

_**-Papa Roach, Scars**_

**-O-**

**OWARI**

**a/n:** **I feed off your depression…**

**REVIEW! And flames my ass…**

**P.S. No, I have not, do not and will not intend to commit suicide. EVER.**


End file.
